Review: The Travelling Companion by Ian Rankin.

Near the end of last year I started to get into a slight panic that I wouldn’t achieve my Goodreads Reading Challenge for 2016. This thought was even more disappointing because a month previously I had lowered my reading challenge from 75 books to 60. As a result of this, I knew that if I wanted to reach my challenge for the year I would need to find a short story to read.

I usually only read short stories if one has been released by an author I love, or if it goes with a series I’ve enjoyed. Outside of this, I’ve always struggled finding short stories I’m interested in when visiting the bookstore, but shortly after Christmas I made a trip to Waterstones and this book caught my eye. I loved the style of the cover and I loved that fact the book was red, so I just bought it without knowing anything about it.

Since this is a short story, I’m not going to write a proper overview of this book for fear of spoiling it, which is often the case for me when I review short stories. However, I can tell you that I really enjoyed this thrilling little book.

Our main character is a big fan of Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Jekyll and Hyde. I may have enjoyed this story more if I was more familiar with Jekyll and Hyde, but all I really know about the story is what is shown in the TV show Once Upon a Time. Then again, it can also be argued that I enjoyed this story more because of my unfamiliarity with Jekyll and Hyde, since it hints at the story within The Travelling Companion and therefore potentially spoils the book for readers. Regardless of which is true, I found this to be an enjoyable book, perfect for a quick read full of tension and mystery.

Honestly, I did find the first part of the book to be a bit slow, but it does pick up and it helps in building suspense. As the book goes on it not only becomes more interesting, but more tense and exciting too. I didn’t expect the end so it left me shocked and I think this surprise is what pushed this to be a four star read for me because I wasn’t expecting the psychological twist it took.

Have you read The Travelling Companion? What were your thoughts?

I’ve also found a new fondness for short stories in the past few months, so if you have any you like, I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

-driftinglexi

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